Donald J. Trump said he would seek to “broaden” laws regarding the torture of terrorism suspects, a day after he said that as president he would be “bound by laws and treaties” that he would not order the military to violate.
Trump has frequently struck an authoritarian note in his discussion of dealing with terrorism suspects — vowing, often with an expletive, to bomb the Islamic State, saying “torture works,” and promising to bring back “waterboarding” and introduce methods that “go a lot further.”
After facing criticism from former military leaders for making such comments, Trump issued a statement Friday through a campaign aide that abruptly departed from those remarks and acknowledged the constraints of international law that a democracy like the United States must abide by.
But at a rally in Orlando, Florida, Trump again altered course.
“As far as the waterboarding is concerned, we have to stay within the laws, we have to stay within the laws,” he said. But seconds later he asked the crowd whether it thought the Islamic State, “who chops off heads, who drowns people in a cage,” stays within the laws.
He said the laws would have to be broadened, “because we’re playing with two sets of rules — their rules and our rules.”
He then repeated an apparently apocryphal story that he insisted has since been proven true that Gen. John J. Pershing, before executing Muslim prisoners in the Philippines about a century ago, dipped bullets in pigs’ blood. He first told the story shortly before the South Carolina primary.
Trump insisted, “For 28 years, there was no more terrorism.” He added, “Look it up!”
Trump also made the audience members raise their right hands and pledge that they would vote for him in the Florida primary, which is March 15, although Trump said it was March 12.
“Remember, you all swore,” Trump said after the hands went up. “You can’t change.”
Throughout the event, Trump was interrupted by protesters, something that appeared to irritate him the longer it went on.
On Friday, “Black Lives Matter” demonstrators were among those who interrupted his rally in New Orleans. But on the same day, The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi, reported that Charles Evers, the elderly brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, was backing Trump.
Evers told the newspaper that he believed Trump would create jobs, and he dismissed complaints about Trump being a polarizing figure.
“I haven’t seen any proof of him being a racist,” Evers said, adding, “All of us have some racism in us. Even me.”
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